“The servants, who had run in with lighted candles,
found him, and, overwhelming him with abuse, seized
him by the collar and dragged him, panting and apparently
half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest police
station. He defended himself with intentional
awkwardness when he was brought up for trial, kept
up his part with the most perfect self-possession
and without any signs of the despair and anguish that
he felt in his heart, and, condemned and degraded
and made to suffer martyrdom in his honor as a man
and a soldier—he was an officer—he
did not protest, but went to prison as one of those
criminals whom society gets rid of like noxious vermin.
“He died there of misery and of bitterness of
spirit, with the name of the fair-haired idol, for
whom he had sacrificed himself, on his lips, as if
it had been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his
will ’to the priest who administered extreme
unction to him, and requested him to give it to me.
In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the
least lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma,
and cleared himself of those accusations the terrible
burden of which he had borne until his last breath.
“I have always thought myself, though I do not
know why, that the girl married and had several charming
children, whom she brought up with the austere strictness
and in the serious piety of former days!”
CLAIR DE LUNE
Abbe Marignan’s martial name suited him well.
He was a tall, thin priest, fanatic, excitable, yet
upright. All his beliefs were fixed, never varying.
He believed sincerely that he knew his God, understood
His plans, desires and intentions.
When he walked with long strides along the garden
walk of his little country parsonage, he would sometimes
ask himself the question: “Why has God
done this?” And he would dwell on this continually,
putting himself in the place of God, and he almost
invariably found an answer. He would never have
cried out in an outburst of pious humility: “Thy
ways, O Lord, are past finding out.”
He said to himself: “I am the servant of
God; it is right for me to know the reason of His
deeds, or to guess it if I do not know it.”
Everything in nature seemed to him to have been created
in accordance with an admirable and absolute logic.
The “whys” and “becauses” always
balanced. Dawn was given to make our awakening
pleasant, the days to ripen the harvest, the rains
to moisten it, the evenings for preparation for slumber,
and the dark nights for sleep.
The four seasons corresponded perfectly to the needs
of agriculture, and no suspicion had ever come to
the priest of the fact that nature has no intentions;
that, on the contrary, everything which exists must
conform to the hard demands of seasons, climates and
matter.
